Dennis Haarsager's rolling environmental scan for electronic media. "Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us." --Jerry Garcia "Wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then." --Bob Seger

Monday, 20 August 2007

How the MyFox deal badly hurts the affiliates

With the MyFox
deal, the Fox-affiliated television stations have just taken the path of
least resistance in the area where they need to make the biggest strides. They
have chosen ease over risk. ...

... We have seen stations fail in their online attempts. What do those failures
have in common?

A lack of an independent platform

A failure to invest in a station’s own infrastructure

The ability to be creative and reflect the needs and desires of their own
communities

No entrepreneurial spirit

Complete control over management

No buy-in from the upper ranks

Revenue sharing

In short: ownership.

The stations that have failed to make money from their online efforts are
those that have failed to take ownership - true ownership - over their sites. By
handing over the command and control to vendors, stations get into this loop
where A. They produce an inferior product, B. They make no money and so C. They
don’t invest in the product. ...

Link: Lost Remote. This longish essay goes on to make a number of interesting points.

In an email heads up about this post, KAKM's John Proffitt adds the following comments:

This logic follows with how I look at pubcasting station web sites as well.
When control and leadership of online work is ceded to an outside entity -- even
one that's a partner/friend/helper -- the local station staff treat online
activities as a forgotten backwater and ignore engaging the public in meaningful
"new media" ways. ...

... Since the web allows for one-to-one and
many-to-many connections, using a third party platform strikes me as
antithetical to the nature of the web. To my way of thinking, stations across
the country that want to remain relevant and engaged going into the future
should do two things:

1. Drop the word "station" from your vocabulary --
that word has declining value and meaning

2. Do all your online work and
social networking yourself -- never turn that over to a hired gun ...